Spider-Man’s Got Nothing On You: Set Up Your Own Website

A stand out website is a must have for any media and communications professional. It is practically a visual resume for industry professionals to look at you and your work. If you don’t know how to get started on creating your own website, here are some great tips to get you going!

Register your domain

With any website, you’re going to need a domain. As stated by the Australian Government, a website domain is “your website address or url on the internet and gives you an online identity or brand”. For a media and communications professional, your name is your best bet! To register your domain name, you will need to find an accredited registrar and pay a fee. You can find out more about registering a domain here!

Find a web hosting company

A web hosting company will get your domain out onto the internet. Web hosting is a service that allows you to post a website or webpage onto the internet, and provides the technologies and services needed for the website or webpage to be viewed in the internet. Most major internet service providers offer web hosting services and provide you with multiple email addresses. If you’re unsure of what you want in a website, there are plenty of web hosting services that provide you with templates such as WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and Weebly.

Plan your content

Decide on what type of website you would like and what you want users to be able to do. This can help you work out what pages and sections you would like to include. For instance, if you would like users to contact you, you can insert a ‘Contact’ section for them to send you a message or to simply have your details available to them. Or if you would like to create blog posts, you can create a section for ‘Blog’ and let users read your content. If you’d like to this, consider this:

Who is the website aimed at?

What skills do you wish to show off? Would you like to teach others these skills?

What will you be writing about?

Plan your website’s design

Your website’s design and layout will be a crucial part as it is a reflection of you – from the colours to the images, even to the font. As I mentioned above, some web hosting services provide templates that allow some customisation. However, they can be limited, depending on what you want your website to do and look like. In this instance, some professionals use HTML coding to create their website from scratch. You will also need to design your website so it is phone optimised since most people have smart phones and tablets that they use professionally. A great guideline for designing web navigation can be found here.

Build your website

You are now ready to build your website! You can try and build it yourself if you are tech savvy by utilising HTML, or if you aren’t (like myself), you can have a professional web developer do it for you. Websites need to be updated regularly, so you will also need to plan for ongoing maintenance.

Some more great tips can be found here on the Business sector of the Queensland Government.